"We feel that Nintendo is not doing enough to promote the service at all," Jag Jaeger, a VP at JV Games said. "We feel that the vast majority of Wii owners have absolutely no idea that they can even connect to the internet."

That is certainly a big part of the problem, and one that the company is starting to address with new advertsing campaigns and promotions centered around WiiWare, the heart of the Wii's network.

It is not at all clear, however, that this is simply an advertising failure. Online gaming with the Wii isn't just less popular -- it simply isn't as good. Nintendo needs to change its online strategy altogether and create a single, unified network that allows gamers to have a profile -- and friends -- that exist across all games on the platform. Then it should make a big PR push.

"Nintendo has always been really inept in their networking department," Jaeger said. "Creating a system so locked down that it becomes unusable defeats any purpose of creating it. Just to say you have it isn't enough."